Dancing my shadow on retreat

This material is copyrighted by M Kirby Moore. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. Thank you for visiting.

Yet again, just dipping my toe into this powerful cauldron of healing wisdom, if even for just an hour or two has resulted in a cathartic visceral shift.

During the evening hours on the retreat at the Sanctuary in Charlottesville, there is one hour when we Dance our Dreams or do Dream Play. What is this? It is a powerful method for exploring and embodying our dreams. Here is a brief description of the method – someone volunteers a dream, tells it in the first person present tense as if they are re-experiencing their dream, they slowly go through it so everyone in the group understands, and any time they mention a noun from the dream, they say the [noun] part of myself. So for instance, whenever they say the blue corvette, they would also say, “the blue corvette part of myself” or “the suspicious character part of myself” or “the dirty dusty basement part of me” etc.

Then the person who volunteered the dream chooses if they just want to do the parts themselves with everyone else as witnesses, or, and I prefer this option, the dreamer assigns group members to play various parts. When it comes to a juicy part of the dream, the dreamer should ideally play those roles. So there is switching from role to role occasionally.

If there is someone in the retreat who has experience with counseling and leading people through a healing process (experienced doing this work themselves too), then they might also ask questions such as, “As blue corvette, what do you need?” or “As the thief part of you, what do you need to feel complete?” Etc.

Therefore this work can be extremely powerful. And as I danced my shadow parts (of myself) from a potent recent dream, I experienced a huge visceral wave move up from my dan tien (hara or energetic body location below and behind the navel) through my solar plexus and then up through my chest. I had rarely ever felt such a powerful wave move through me, and all I was doing was speaking as my shadow parts. The question which triggered my healing was, “As shadow part, what do you need in relation to Kirby? What does Kirby need to do or need to know?”

It was awesome! I said that Kirby (speaking as shadow) needed to recognize me, then he needed to accept me, he needed to embrace me and finally he needed to fully understand me which would ultimately liberate me. Well, in a sort of crazy wisdom manner, we cut up the shadow parts of me (I played both roles as shadow being cut up and then switched to being Kirby doing the cutting), boiled these parts in a cauldron and then offered them to the wisdom beings to liberate. Woof!

And this all happened in less than two hours… I would say I don’t think this retreat could go any deeper, but I continue to be surprised. So I’m not going to hold my breath.

Thanks for reading!